The Learning Marketplace

With the pending doom of college debt and a possibly unsatisfying career, many of today's youth feel increasingly unenthusiastic about their ability to handle adulthood.

We seek to eradicate these issues by creating education tools that tap into the unique learning styles of today's internet-immersed youth, teaching them how to manage their finances, go to college debt-free and start socially conscious businesses from a young age. 

Through this approach, we are able to decrease youth anxiety around adulthood and their ability to manage their financial lives. This creates a ripple effect - the youth we work with will share information and resources with their peers and families. They will also be empowered to build purpose-driven, conscious initiatives that will help foster change throughout their communities. 

If scaled globally, we can educate many more youth and therefore change the trajectory of many lives on the micro and macro levels.

The age of technology and media is affecting the way children cognitively take in information and how they interact with society at large. Traditional education is not always appealing to them and thus they aren’t learning as well as other generations. 

Also, we work primarily in the US where student loan debt is $1.5trillion. This creates a stressful environment around education, both pre and post college. 

Due to these and many other issues, violence and emotional issues are becoming increasingly prevalent within the youth population. Many youth are falling through the cracks, both economically and socially, as their mental health declines. 

We are working with the youth population from both middle class and underserved communities. 

Our programming is developed as a direct response to some of the harshest realities facing today's youth, such as the increase of gun violence in schools, the foreboding reality of astronomic amounts of student loan debt, and the rise of mental health issues. 

We develop our learning tools through a process of youth engagement and research so that we fully understand their needs, and our languaging and constructs are optimized to match their unique learning styles. 

Our project is a K-12 experiential education platform that supplements traditional education via online and lives experiences. 

Our programming addresses the current issues youth are facing, and we offer enrichment products that enhance children's decision making capabilities through unique products that expand their brains and hearts. 

We provide the tools and information youth need to make sound decisions, become compassionate leaders, launch purpose-driven businesses while still young, begin managing their finances early, and attend college debt-free. 

At The Learning Marketplace, we offer enrichment products that enhance youth's decision making capabilities through unique products that expand their brains and hearts. These products are founded on our key value of compassion, collaboration and contribution. K-12 youth are our primary target audience. 

To do this work we work with partners such as: for-profit and non-profit organizations & schools who purchase bulk subscriptions on our virtual platform to provide opportunities for scholarly expansion for youth in their communities; corporate sponsors & community organizations who host us for live education experiences for youth engagement. 

Our virtual platform utilizes an experiential learning methodology that includes easily downloadable products that teach students via reading and interactive, actionable exercises that are carefully crafted to keep youth fully engaged. 

At our tech-infused live experiences, we implement learning exercises via group sessions. These live events give youth an opportunity to voice their thoughts and concerns, and interact with our students, which often enhances impact and the retention of key information.

All of our learning experiences aim to encourage youth through 8 overarching objectives:

1. Strong critical thinking

2. Effective communication

3. Empathetic human interaction

4. Intentional decision making

5. Lifetime learning

6. Productive engagement in society

7. Conscious transacting

8. Economic empowerment

In short, our unique marketplace utilizes new technology and proven methods of learning in order to enhance the future of the world - the youth. 

Many of our proprietary products on our marketplace are built on ruby on rails technology. The marketplace itself is built on a custom coded wordpress platform. We are currently working on building out AI chatbot technology in order to further enhance our learning experience.

Our program utilizes a process of learning that includes reading, deep self-analysis and actionable exercises that are implemented both during and after the lesson. This process of learning helps to cement knowledge into the minds of the engaged youth, which generates behavior change in the short and long term. Once youth have a newfound understanding in these critical areas of decision-making, they pass on the information to their peers and family members, and become thoughtful, purpose-driven adults. This therefore becomes a sustainable cycle - where conscious youth become conscious adults who raise conscious youth. This, we believe, is the key to shifting the trajectory of the world and eradicating some of our most daunting socioeconomic issues.   

Our unique approach to education solves the problem in youth learning by bridging the gap between today's technology-immersed youth and the traditional education system which is failing. 

Our products are developed after much in-depth research into the cognitive processes of today's youth population. From this we are able to formulate content that taps into the youth's sensibilities, and provide education that can be used in the real world. 

Currently Serving: approximately 1000 youth annually during our pilot program

Projected to be serving in 1 year: 100,000 youth annually

Projected to be serving in 5 years: 1,000,000 youth annually

Our goal for in the next year is to solidify funding in order to fully scale. Within the year we would like launch and grow our reach to 100,000 annually. 

Within 5 years we would like to continue to grow our reach to 1,000,000 anually through the implementation of a global marketing campaign. 

Our barriers to growth include a lack of awareness regarding the need for  education reform, and the need for additional funding. 

People are not aware of the dire circumstances plaguing today's youth in terms of the decline in their mental health overall, and the decline in effectiveness of the education system. This lack of awareness presents us with the additional task of convincing our clients, at all levels, that there is a great need to supplement and change youth education. 

Funding is another barrier, as our outreach and marketing are critical for growth in order to build awareness around the need for change and the products themselves. With limited capital, our efforts are confined to grassroots outreach, which though often effective, still limits our scope and reach.

We are actively overcoming these barriers by building awareness and seeking partners who provide support by helping us to reach youth within their communities. We are also rolling out a PR campaign, which allows us to spread the message about our products to influential people within the education and tech industries. 

Along these lines, some of our current partners include: Capgemini, Capital One Bank, Apple, Uncommon Schools and the city of Santa Monica.

We are also engaging in programs for startups, which is helps us refine our offerings, systems and operations. This is also an avenue to source investor funding. 

Our founder is currently enrolled in Startupbootcamp Fintech in Australia.

The Learning Marketplace is a subsidiary of Youthful Savings. Youthful Savings has been around for over 6 years. We struggled with maintaining our necessary financial education solutions in classrooms after the administration change in 2016. In May 2018, we built an online hub for our education materials and aim to create a marketplace where youth can truly engage with necessary life skills education. Youthful Savings continues to produce world class education material and we hope to inspire others to do the same so we can truly energize the global, education economy.

More information about our structure can be found HERE.

There are four contractors working on our team, and our founder works on the project full-time.

More information about our team can be found HERE.

Our founder, Somya Munjal, has worked in the field of financial management for many years and is the owner of a CPA firm. She has taken her vast knowledge of finances, taxation and economy to create tools that help youth lead debt-free lives and launch successful businesses.

Somya is supported by a dedicated team, each equally passionate about youth empowerment and positive social impact.

Gurpreet Singh is our tech expert and acts as our Chief Human Technology Officer. He has worked for large organizations like Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase. He is excited to bring his skillset to a life changing company like The Learning Marketplace!

Danny Donayre is our Chief Intuitive Marketing Officer and also a youth education coach. 

Kinisha Correia is our Chief Community Engager who has years of experience in media and communications.

Karyn Leal is our Social Media Maven who has experience reaching the community through impact-driven content.

We are currently working with Capital One Cafes across the nation to implement live interactive learning experiences for youth in each city. 

We have also recently worked with Apple to host a live interactive learning experience at their Santa Monica store. We will be hosting more events at that location, and are looking to replicate that programming at their NYC flagship store in the Fall. 

We are working with Capgemini in Australia and National Australia Bank in order to implement live learning experiences for youth within their headquarters. These are our first international endeavors.

We will be also be working with Uncommon Schools in the Fall to provide experiential learning tools and events for their students, starting with the NYC school.

Our other US-based school and city partners who have subscribed to our online portal include Newark Community High School, the City of Santa Monica, Avondale Meadows Academy, Santa Monica College. 

Key Customers 

• Schools
• Corporate Companies
• Nonprofit Organizations & Associations

Key Beneficiaries

• Youth currently enrolled in K-12 Education
• Youth from Underserved Populations
• Low to Middle Income Youth 

Products & Services Provided

• Virtual Experiential Learning Products
• Live Learning Experiences

How we provide our products/services

• Via our online marketplace - large entities purchase bulk subscriptions for groups of youth
• We conduct live experiential learning sessions in partnership with large organizations - corporate, scholastic and nonprofit

Our work is funded through: 

• Selling bulk subscriptions to large organizations - corporate, scholastic and nonprofit. 
• Raising Investment Capital
• Grants

This program can help us solve the barriers of: 

Awareness-Building

Being involved in the Solve program will give us exposure within the tech industry and provide us an opportunity to network with influential people and other tech companies within the space. We believe this exposure is an important part of growing our brand and reach, as partnerships are a critical component of our work. 

Optimizing Our Technology 

The opportunity for guidance from industry mentors will help us refine and optimize the development of our tech tools and products, as well our operations.

We have seen a lot of success when we partner with corporations. We believe they have a vested interest in raising human capital and our youth are our future world leaders. Therefore, we hope to solidify our traction in the coming year and transition into a platform that is sold into corporations as part of their corporate / employee benefits programming. We believe we are a necessary child care solution and we offer education that is missing from schools. Corporations have a vested interest in keeping their employees happy and also investing in the next wave of future leaders.

We want to continue our partnership with Apple. Our digital learning products work well with their iOs system, are a great culture fit and inline with their Today at Apple education initiatives. We would like to work with them as we work with other corporates as well as it helps their enterprise sales initiatives. 

Each of our products are a great fit for a corporate partner. Our goal is to match our products with a corporate leader and successfully host youth in real life experiences while simultaneously engaging them with our online education platform.

We aim to be a human technology company. We offer a digital home but also want to reach the hearts of the youth through our unique Live Experiences.

Through online and in person education, we believe the next generation will be the best generation yet and truly solve world problems.

We are working hard to add AI chatbot technology to each of our learning exercises. We are working with an organization out of Kazakhstan in order to develop this. We have a team of strategists from National Australia Bank and CapGemini helping us create this. We believe the youth will need to be engaged with our products and AI can help enhance their critical thinking skills.

Being a woman in the finance, education and technology industry is not easy. However, I find challenges an important part of growing a society. I believe I represent someone that is moving the needle in women's economic parity.

HERE is more information about me. Also, THIS is one of my favorite interviews where I describe how necessary it is for women to fight for equal rights - not just for themselves but for the world at large.

I hope to be considered for this prize as being a strong woman leader that truly uplifts other young women is a big reason why I work so hard to disrupt social norms.

We will use this prize to provide gun violence prevention programming at Uncommon Schools - a nonprofit charted public school chain with 53 schools that serves 19,000 students in key US cities - Camden, NYC, Boston, Newark, Rochester and Troy.